For some time now, Sara Blanch has ceased to be a promise of the operatic firmament to become one of its greatest assets to emerge from the Iberian Peninsula. The Catalan soprano, who has returned to Barcelona the title of youth group of voices that make history, captivated the audience at the Real on Wednesday. The reason was the premiere of Il turco in Italia, by Gioachino Rossini, whose leading role was to be played by the American diva Lisette Oropesa, momentarily afflicted with a cold. But far from lamenting her absence, the Madrid room warmly celebrated the performance that the Tarragona woman did in her place, initially scheduled for the second cast.
His special singing and the imposing voice of the Georgian baritone Misha Kiria, in the role of the husband, was the most cheered during the final six minutes of applause that the public dedicated to this comic opera, in a magnificent new co-production of the capital’s Coliseum with Lyon and Tokyo. Laurent Pélly’s stage direction, as lively as Giacomo Sagripanti’s musical, was joined by a solid cast, with a scorching Alex Esposito in the role of the good-looking Turk with whom flirtatious Italian Fiorilla falls for.
Sara Blanch knows how to combine her beautiful coloratura voice -not excessively big at the moment-, with great acting skills. There is not a single note that leaves her mouth without first passing through her entire being. Either she feels it or she doesn’t sing it. That is why she turns out to be so disarming in this buffo drama, in a comic role as Fiorilla, the sexually liberated wife who collects lovers, but who also ends up crying painfully in the corners until she is happily reinstated by her husband.
The cast seems to have had a great time crafting this comedic montage. As much as Laurent Pélly, of whom at the Real has been seen, for example, Viva la Mamma! The French reggista transfers to the 20th century the action of this plot full of humor that in its day, already entering the romantic period, was a scandal. In fact, it was the last time that Rossini gave voice to a woman with total sexual initiative like Fiorilla. After the premiere of Il turco in Italia in Milan in 1814, the libretto suffered censorship. In Rome, without going any further, it was considered unacceptable for the husband to be “cuckolded” and they demanded to change her relationship with the protagonist.
And there was yet another occasion when the poor lover Narciso, with whom Fiorella secretly meets and who now has to put up with her flirtation with the good-looking Turkish newcomer, was passed off as a nephew, in the purest Mogambo style of Franco’s censorship. Although, as Joan Matabosch, artistic director of the Real, explains, these modifications took place in the hand program, while on stage they did not change a comma.
Pélly takes the action to the 20th century through a vintage Modern Bed Designs of elegant tube or puffy skirts, very fifties. But she wraps the atmosphere of the set with vignettes from the Italian fotonovela that has been so successful since the late sixties. “I can’t love you”, reads the giant title of one of them. Alain Delon-esque faces and Romy Schneider-esque choker scarves fill the pages of the magazines that decorate the set.
Those romances would fill Fiorilla’s leisure hours lying on the deck chair. With Geronio, her husband, trying to spoil her party by passing the lawn mower, while the poet Prosdocimo (competent Florian Sempey) observes the daily scenes in search of a plot that triggers her inspiration.
Pélly plays, on the one hand, with the rhythmic frenzy of the music to turn the dialogues and interactions between the artists into eventual still photos, like those in the fotonovela. She even makes use of ensemble vocal moments to play Fiorilla out of the cartoon while the rest of the characters prevent her from doing so.
But his meta-theatrical play does not end here: the poet Prosdocimo is not here a mere observer who is inspired by the jocular everyday scenes for his next plot. No, in the production of the Real he is one more character, to the point of inviting the viewer to think that he is dealing with an author in search of six characters, unlike Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author.
The six artists – counting a magnificent Paola Gardina in the role of Zaida, the gypsy who is the old love of the Turk, and the Narciso defended by the Uruguayan tenor Edgardo Rocha, who improves as the opera progresses – were up to the task. of a musically ferocious and scenically audacious montage that puts the humorous counterpoint of the best Rossini to the spring season.